Blogging at the Big Dog

To rant or not to rant?

Ah, what the heck, it’s been a while since I’ve gone on a good pet peeve rant and the release of the new James Bond movie provides a perfect opportunityto do so. Quantum Solace. What is with the title of this film? Quantum Solace. Sounds cool, right? But what does it actually mean? Quantum (from the Latin quantus, meaning how much) is generally used only in physics and is the smallest discrete quantity of some physical property that a system can possess. By broadening the definition to mean a quantity, measure or amount (presumably a tiny one) the title of this flick can basically be boiled down to Small Comfort, which makes sense because the last time we saw the famed British super agent he had just been betrayed by a woman he had fallen in love with.

For me, this falls under the category of the old KISS principle. Why not just call it Small Comfort, a better title if you ask me, but not very cool and therefore not
very Bondish, I suppose.

Another pet peeve related to people trying to sound cool when simple would do just as well is the use, or, I should say misuse, of the verb comprise. It drives me crazy when people (especially journalists who ought to know better) say something is comprised of something else. The “is” and the “of” are redundant. And what’s wrong with saying something is composed of something else? Doesn’t sound as cool, I guess, but at least its proper.

So, what’s the big deal? Who cares, right? Well, that’s the whole idea behind pet peeves. Basically they are inconsequential things that make you nuts to help keep your mind off consequential things like global economic meltdown and innocent children starving in Africa.

Uh oh, better get back to my language peeves before this devolves into a column about something that matters. Here’s a good one: why do so many people mispronounce the word familiar? It’s not fur-mill-yer. There is no second “r” in this word. The root of fa-mill-yar is family, but you don’t hear people going around saying fur-mill-ee.

I know, now I’m really going off the deep end of inconsequential. Well, how about nuclear, then? New-clee-ar. How difficult is that? Too difficult, apparently, for the guy who has had his finger on the “new-cue-ler” button for the last eight years. It wasn’t a speech impediment, either, simply willful ignorance. If you’re going to hold Armageddon within your grasp, the least you could do is learn how to pronounce a simple word. By the way, the new guy who will have his finger on the button come January knows how to pronounce it.

Finally, I just have to go off on the subject of adverbs and adjectives. I generally cut Joe Sixpack some slack in this regard, but the demise of the adverb is becoming a disturbing trend in broadcasting, and even print media (just what are they teaching in J-school these days, anyway?) This ain’t rocket science, folks. All you have to do is stick a “ly” on the end of the adjective if you’re modifying a verb rather than a noun.

“He drives carefully;” versus “He is a careful driver.” You don’t have to hold an advanced degree in English (or even a high school diploma) to get that distinction.

That brings us to the end of what is surely an inconsequential column, but I feel much better having ranted.

In the aftermath of the historic election of the first black American president, there has been much wrangling over the challenges he now faces and what kind of president he will be. As pundits grapple with the symbolism of the vote and Barack Obama’s iconic status, I submit this: it doesn’t matter.

Good, bad or indifferent, Obama has already done his job. He got elected.

One of the best things I heard during election night coverage on CBC was a quote from an anonymous source: “Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. King walked so Barack Obama could run. Obama ran so we all could fly.”

Sometimes iconic is all you need to be. The next generation of black Americans will grow up in a country in which King’s dream of a time when a person is judged by the content of his character rather than the colour of his skin is not just an ideal, but a tangible possibility.

That is not to say Tuesday Nov. 4, 2008 represents the end of civil rights struggles in the United States. For example, while the California vote was a virtual landslide for Obama, the same people passed a resolution rescinding gay marriage rights. Furthermore, 76 percent of African Americans who voted for Obama in California voted against homosexual nuptials. Bigotry and discrimination is far from dead south of the border.

Still, it is progress. Progress Canadians overwhelmingly support. If we were the fifty-first state, Obama would have won here by five-to-one. The reason: we think it brings them closer to our own ideals. Let’s think again. African Americans in the U.S. had the right to vote, at least theoretically, a century before Native Canadians did here. And while we have come a long way to entrenching these rights politically, both the U.S. and Canada still have a long way to go to remove the institutional and societal barriers to full democracy.

Also, while we see Obama as progressive, we are judging him by American standards, not Canadian ones. He is still way more conservative than our version of conservatism. How so many Canadians who hate and distrust Stephen Harper can love and trust Barack Obama is a little bit confusing. Oh yeah, there is that charisma thing.

In any event, President Obama is light years superior to the alternative. Even the idea of Sarah Palin in the Vice President’s chair sends shivers down my spine.

Much has been said in the last week about this historic election restoring the USA’s reputation. Let’s hope so, but it’s a long road ahead. There are still two wars to deal with, the unabashed greed of unbridled capitalism to correct and the growing threat of evangelical, rapture-seeking militant Christianity to quash.

As Leonard Cohen said, America is the cradle of the best and of the worst. The worst will definitely rear its ugly head again. In the meantime, let us just savour a moment in which the best has prevailed and that means so much to so many around the world.

That change is possible.

That ignorance is defeatable.

That there is always hope.